As Mayor Joe Hogsett announced a $166.5 million anti-violence plan that focuses heavily on public safety, I was beginning to read a book by criminologist Byron R. Johnson. His book, More God, Less Crime, assesses the many studies that have been done on the effect of religion in crime reduction.
It is a subject that the many in the secular world find somewhat distasteful, relegating the very positive findings to the bottom shelf of actionable measures. Yet these findings—from universities and think tanks all over the U.S.—are clear. The injection of a moral code, delivered by trusted community faith leaders in relationship with those leaning toward criminal behavior, produces dramatic change.
The “Boston Miracle” of the 1990s is a case in point. With record homicides and assaults, the Boston Police Department was struggling to keep up, and Boston’s African American clergymen were the police department’s biggest critics. Then, during a funeral of a young gang member, another gang member was chased into the church and was beaten and stabbed to death before the eyes of the congregation. Everything changed that day.
More than 50 churches banned together. They left the sanctity of their ecclesiastic halls and redefined what community meant, bringing the love of Christ to the at-risk youth community, building solid relationships and dramatically reducing crime in the streets. Because the pastors knew the neighborhoods as well as the troublemakers, they established themselves as a group that could be trusted, and as they proactively engaged gang leaders and members, they were doing something the Boston police could never have done by themselves.
These faith leaders seemed to be making progress. So in 1992, the police department launched a unique model of community policing—combining crime prevention, law enforcement, community churches, and even gang leaders, to develop a new approach to community safety. From a high of 152 homicides in 1990, after 10 years of these combined policing efforts, the homicide rate had dropped 80 percent. Is Boston so different than Indianapolis?
Armed with millions in Federal money, Indianapolis is not short of funds. So, with every hopeful intention, our city government plans to invest more than $400 million that will include the single-largest commitment to IMPD and community-based public safety efforts in our city’s 200-year history. With $82 million toward community-led programming and $51.5 million toward “root cause” services like mental health care, hunger relief and workforce development.
All these things are good, but let us never forget the ‘secret sauce’ in this recipe. Knowing you are loved and believing in a God that cares for you is what takes every communication to a different, more powerful level. When you are told you can be forgiven, and that even if your earthly father forsakes you, you have a loving Father in heaven who will never forsake you, you are hearing the language of redemption, words that have the power to change your life—the same words that have changed lives for more than two thousand years.
Money’s great. Not much gets done without it.
But don’t forget God,
Nancy
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